Offering
by Jargonelle
Summary: One shot: ‘He said that she had already missed her chance. She certainly had now.’ Anzu x Yugi.


Offering by Jargonelle  
  
One-shot: Anzu x Yugi for the shipper-list challenge thing at KG (where I'm known as Marcie).  
  
'He said that she had already missed her chance. She certainly had now.'  
  
Thank you to AngstJunkie for reviewing this earlier. Even if she never reads this, I just want to say that she inspired me to take another look at Anzu, and I'm really glad I did. She rocks.  
  
~~  
  
This was where her mother would have sat.  
  
Well, maybe not this exact seat, but this row anyway.  
  
Her parents had always been supportive of her, and would always pay extra to sit in one the front few rows at the theatre when she was performing.  
  
Her mother loved to watch her dance, loved to see her daughter excel at the art she'd sacrificed when her husband-to-be had settled in Domino, working at a local electronics corporation. They'd been so happy, she'd given no further thought to her dreams of the international stage and was more than delighted with the life she had made instead.  
  
Her father, though sometimes finding the performances unnecessarily long, would always be there with a smile and a hug. A recent photograph of his only daughter lay upon his desk at work, the girl dressed for a production of Swan Lake, which had premiered at the theatre she was currently standing in.  
  
There was a different show running this week.  
  
She could have been back stage right then, flustered about hairspray and make-up, mentally running through the complicated routines and feeling fantastically excited about the upcoming night.  
  
Instead, Anzu got down on her hands and knees to pick up the discarded plastic cup that some other girl's parent had dropped at the early evening performance. The worn red carpet was rough against her skin and alongside the cup she found the remains of a half-eaten ice cream which stuck to her fingers.  
  
It was pathetic, she thought, to be the cleaner for a group of people who used to adore her. The dancers were competitive, occasionally bitchy and definitely ambitious, but she had been good friends with them for years, ever since her first ballet lesson at the age of four. Her instructor had told her parents then that she would never make it because she had started too late.  
  
He said that she had already missed her chance.  
  
She certainly had now.  
  
~~  
  
She tried to convince herself that she didn't regret it.  
  
Instead of attending an important rehearsal for a previous show, she had stole her way onto a boat with Honda and followed Yugi to Pegasus' island.  
  
That in itself wasn't disastrous, she hadn't been cast out of the company or anything, but her absence had definitely been noted. The next time they'd needed a soloist, Anzu had found herself being passed over in favour of a younger, less-experienced dancer.  
  
They'd used the Battle City tournament as a test.  
  
Right at the height of the excitement, when a kind of duel madness was sweeping the streets, that was when the next big production was announced. It wasn't only Anzu who found herself torn, but she was the only one who stayed away.  
  
Finally, there was the inevitable trip to Egypt, which, inevitably, clashed with the auditions for this major, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Once the show had finished its run in Domino and the local area, it would be entered into a national competition and the winning group would get the chance to perform in New York.  
  
There was never any chance of her getting involved with the company again after she'd proven definitively that her loyalties lay elsewhere.  
  
Her parents argued for her and then argued with her, before her mother gently took her husband to one side and explained that Anzu had fallen in love. Angry and upset, there was nothing they could do – it had been Anzu's choice whether to throw her chance away or not, and in truth, there had never been a choice. Yugi would always come first.  
  
~~  
  
There were three reasons why she had taken the job as an usher-cum-cleaner.  
  
Firstly, she wanted to make sure that she fully understood what she had done. She knew that some of the girls were laughing at her behind her back, and she wanted, no she needed, to feel that pain and anger.  
  
Second, she needed to know this was not the end of the world. She could still come here, head held high and wish everyone luck for the next performance. She'd always placed the highest value on friendship and she wanted to honour that, even if the others weren't.  
  
Thirdly, and she hated herself for this one, she wanted to drive it home to Yugi exactly how much she missed out on. She didn't want him to feel guilty, though that would probably be an unavoidable side-effect, she just wanted him to know that she would do anything for him.  
  
He had never truly known this part of her. He had listened as she'd described her latest performances and auditions, but had never been there, never seen how much of her life she had poured into her art. She had spent hours practising single moves, revelling in the knowledge that she was improving.  
  
Those days seemed so long ago.  
  
~~  
  
She had already decided that as long as Yugi lived in Domino, she would live there too. She wanted to be near him, to see him every day and to make sure that they never lost contact.  
  
Twenty years ago, that would have been the only possible way.  
  
But Anzu had grown up as a member of the GameBoy generation, with virtual pets and mobile phones and holographic duelling arenas which were so realistic that sometimes they scared her. The global village meant that Yugi would, at most, only be a few hours away from her, no matter where she lived.  
  
She didn't have to give up her career for him, not that he ever would have asked, not that he even knew she had.  
  
She wanted to though.  
  
It was stupid, she may have offered her world to him, but he had done nothing in return. He and his other half had saved her every time she needed saving, but he had saved Jounouchi, Honda and Kaiba just the same. Any decent human being would have done.  
  
He probably didn't even like her that way.  
  
~~  
  
Her last day working at the theatre, and she was glad to be rid of it.  
  
Although it had been her intention to show Yugi what she had suffered, she now hated what she had done to him.  
  
He would turn up every day, a few minutes before she finished work, and wait outside for her. When it rained, when it was cold, even when the show was delayed by half an hour and she finished late, he was there for her.  
  
She hated that he was feeling so guilty; he was simply being a good friend, but she wanted to believe that there was more to it than that. She was using him, taking advantage of his trust in her. She had become everything she had always despised.  
  
Love truly was a powerful emotion.  
  
~~  
  
She adored his smile, his laugh, the way he poured so much feeling into the way he spoke someone's name. She could decipher exactly how annoyed he was with Kaiba or how amused he was by Jounouchi from just one word. Yet she couldn't figure out how he felt about her no matter how many times he called out to get her attention when she left the theatre.  
  
"Anzu!"  
  
She turned around and greeted him with a bright smile. She offered him the shared use of her umbrella, though it was mainly a symbolic gesture; Yugi was already soaking wet from waiting outside.  
  
She chided him for his irresponsibility, "Don't you know you could have got sick?"  
  
Yugi laughed, he had heard this lecture before, not only from her.  
  
"Seriously," she added, ashamed.  
  
He wrapped an arm around hers and squeezed it reassuringly, "I'm all right."  
  
Feeling guilty about enjoying even that small contact, Anzu purposely fumbled with her umbrella, so that she needed both hands to keep control of it. Keeping her eyes on the road ahead, she said, "That's my last day here, you know? You don't have to come walk me home any longer."  
  
"I like walking you home."  
  
"I like having you walk me home," she said, and giggled slightly at how awkward their conversation had become after more than a decade of comfortable friendship.  
  
"You can come over to my house tomorrow if you want," Yugi offered.  
  
"Will Jounouchi and Honda and the others be there?" Anzu asked, in what she hoped was an unconcerned tone of voice.  
  
"Tomorrow they will be, but not the day after, nor the day after that. Whenever you're free is ok with me."  
  
Anzu blushed, but it was dark and she didn't think he had noticed. "Sunday sounds good, maybe in the afternoon. The two of us can talk, you know, like we used to?"  
  
"That would be great."  
  
~~  
  
The walk, as always, seemed too short to Anzu, who had slung her arm around Yugi, sharing her warmth with him. They stopped outside her house where he turned to her, a slightly nervous expression on his face, as if he wasn't sure that what he was going to say would be received well.  
  
"If you ever want me to walk you home... I'll be there," Yugi said sincerely, hugging her tightly.  
  
Anzu's heart fluttered faster at that. She waited until he was out of sight before running to her room and squealing in delight. This could almost be considered a romance.  
  
~~  
  
A month, or near enough, had passed. The sun had rose and set twenty-eight times since Anzu had last set foot inside the theatre; she didn't know when she would have the strength to return.  
  
It was already late afternoon when Anzu deftly fished her key out of her jacket pocket and unlocked the front door. She had just come home after visiting Yugi and was lovingly replaying their final conversation in her head. He was so sweet, continuing to offer to walk her home like that, and even though she had gently refused his proposal, it was still responsible for the pleased smile that tugged at her cheeks.  
  
Once inside, she gathered up the post that had piled up when no one had been looking, and took it to the kitchen table. In amongst the bills for her parents, the free local newspaper and the unwanted advertisements for window cleaners, was her own mobile phone bill.  
  
Deciding that she didn't want to face that particular obstacle just yet, she turned her attention to the paper. She had never properly read it, but it on the centre page, it had a list of the films being shown at the nearby cinemas. Anzu flicked eagerly to the middle, praying that there was something that she and Yugi could go and see together, as a date, rather than as friends.  
  
She'd forgotten, of course, that local drama and dance productions were also advertised there.  
  
There was a half-page spread about the production she'd missed out on, which congratulated the Domino girls who had taken part in the dance that had won the infamous competition.  
  
Anzu read the article twice, noting the names of those who had been chosen to go to New York, and the names of those who hadn't. She shocked herself by not feeling even the slightest bit jealous about their successes.  
  
She hadn't realised it until then, but what she felt for Yugi had always been more real to her than her silly American dream.  
  
Their love might not last forever, but they were young and they were happy and the future was bright and almost infinite, even if she would never be the famous dancer she'd always hoped to be.  
  
As she refolded the paper, glossing over the lost images of her discarded dreams, she just hoped that in the end, Yugi would be worth it.  
  
She'd given up too much for him not to be.  
  
THE END 


End file.
